EDWARD R. "NED" DAVIS, A MAN OF GLAD GRACE

By Celia Cohen
Grapevine Political Writer

Edward R. Davis, a lyrical grand old man known to all
simply as "Ned," died Wednesday morning at home in Dover
at the age of 78, closing nearly half a century of a
vigorous and essential public life that made him the
touchstone of official Delaware.

It was not an unexpected day. His health had been
precarious for years, but he kept coming back, as if
answering the call of a state that did not know what it
would do without him.

His daughter Mary C. Davis, who worked with him in
his lobbying firm of Ned Davis Associates, said she
found him when she arrived to take him to a session of
kidney dialysis, and although he was still warm and she
put his head in her lap, she knew he was gone.

Ned Davis was an unforgettable figure. In appearance
he stood stooped and gnarled, not looking like much, but
in a fairer world he would have had the physique of
Mercury, the chiseled messenger to the gods, because
that is what Ned was -- someone who shuttled to all the
power centers of Delaware to bring counsel and
compromise.

He was a molder and a mold breaker, unfettered to
convention with the reach and ruminative instincts of a
Renaissance man.

He was a newspaperman who crossed over to politics.
He was the most powerful press secretary that Delaware
ever saw when he worked for Gov. Charles L. Terry Jr. in
the 1960s, and he counseled every other governor since
who would listen to him. He was the model for the modern
lobbying corps.

He was a Democratic national committeeman with no
time for Richard Nixon, but he worked loyally for John
W. Rollins Sr., the Republican business executive who
called Nixon a friend.

He was devoted to hunting and quoting poetry and
playing cards at the Maple Dale Country Club. He wrote
better than any journalist alive, and people cherished
and saved his letters. He was thoughtful and sociable
and witty, and he deserves to be remembered by the words
of William Butler Yeats, who wrote, "How many loved your
moments of glad grace."

Ned Davis thrived on politics. Not too many years
ago, in really dangerous health, he went anyway to Gov.
Ruth Ann Minner's annual crab feast in Milford, even
though it took a wheelchair and an oxygen tank to get
him there. As recently as Sunday, he attended an event
for Joseph R. "Beau" Biden III, the Democratic candidate
for attorney general.

"He was a Democrat to the core, but he always played
fair. He always had a twinkle in his eye, and he set the
standard for the way that politicians and lobbyists
should behave," said W. Laird Stabler Jr., a past
Republican national committeeman whose reputation also
transcends partisanship.

"When I think of Ned Davis, I always smile. Anyone
who can have that said about him would probably think
he'd done a pretty good job."

As word of his death spread, the accolades poured in
from Delawareans who found him indispensable and
irreplaceable.

Gov. Minner, a two-term Democrat, and U.S. Rep.
Michael N. Castle, who was a two-term Republican
governor, used similar words in remembering Davis, with
Minner calling him "a dear and trusted friend" and
Castle describing him as a "trusted adviser in Delaware
political circles."

Michele M. Rollins, the face of the Rollins
enterprises since her husband died in 2000, has known
and relied on Davis for 30 years. "He is an institution
in Delaware, he is part of our family, and he is what
statesmanship is for lobbying. He worked for the best
interest of Delaware, his client and the other side."

Chief Justice Myron T. Steele goes back with Davis,
as so many leading Delawareans do, to a goose blind
while hunting in 1970 as a deputy attorney general in
the company of a judge. "All the members of Delaware's
judiciary counted on him as a friend. He was always
tuned into our issues and helped any way he could,"
Steele said.

There was no one happier than Davis when Minner
appointed Steele to the state's top judicial post. It
meant Delaware had a Kent County Democrat as its
governor and a Kent County Democrat as its chief
justice, and his deep association with both had helped
to make it happen.

Gary B. Patterson, a lobbyist and a Republican who
nevertheless was part of Minner's kitchen cabinet along
with Davis, said there was no one with better style. "He
was so agreeable to disagree with. I'm sure we all have
enemies, but Ned had the fewest of us all," Patterson
said.

Davis was born in Laurel, but he was made for Dover.
State Sen. Thurman G. Adams Jr., the Democratic
president pro tem from Bridgeville, remembered meeting
Davis there as early as 1947, when they were members of
Boys State, Davis as a senator and Adams as an
alternate.

Ten years later, after an eclectic mix of English and
philosophy courses in college and time spent in the
Marine Corps, Davis was back for good. His first paying
job in Legislative Hall was as a newspaperman, but he
was drawn to the magisterial presence of Charlie Terry,
then the chief justice, and went to work for him when he
was elected governor in 1964.

Actually, Davis did some work for Terry before he was
the governor, as he confessed in an account of the Terry
administration he wrote for the Delaware Heritage
Commission in 2000.

The night before the Democratic state convention when
Terry knew he would be "drafted" off the bench to run
for governor, he called Davis to his Dover home and
asked him to write his acceptance speech. "Today it
would probably cause quaking and anguish in the
editorial rooms, but I really didn't think much about it
as I was extremely fond of the chief justice," Davis
wrote.

Davis switched sides of the notebook some more,
covering the election with what he insisted was a
dutiful neutrality and then joining the administration.
Officially he was the press secretary, but really a
chief aide along with William T. Quillen, a lawyer who
was the administrative assistant until Terry made him a
judge, the start of a judicial career that took him to
the Superior Court, Court of Chancery and Supreme Court.

From Quillen's perspective, Terry and Davis could not
have been a better fit. "Ned enjoyed the same things
Terry did. He enjoyed hunting and the race track and
playing cards," Quillen said.

Terry was out as governor after a term, defeated by
his stubbornness in leaving the National Guard in
Wilmington long after the 1968 riots and by a heart
attack during the campaign season. John Rollins snapped
up Davis to work for him, and while there, he took on
some outside clients in the first manifestation of
modern lobbying in Dover. He formed Ned Davis Associates
in 1974.

"He really did start the contract lobbying business
in Delaware," said Robert L. Byrd, a leading state
lobbyist who got to Dover as a Democratic state
representative in 1974.

"He was the dean for those of us who came into the
profession. He was the greater among equals, sort of the
mentor to us all. We lost an icon. It's going to be a
different place," said David S. Swayze, a lawyer and
lobbyist who was a chief of staff to Republican Gov.
Pierre S. du Pont in the 1970s, although he was a
Democrat himself.

Davis had an impressive list of business clients,
even as he kept the faith as a liberal Democrat and
served as his party's national committeeman from 1972 to
1988. He was around for landmark legislative initiatives
like the Financial Center Development Act, which brought
the banks to the state in 1981. It sometimes has been
said there would have been no sweeping ban on indoor
smoking in 2002 if Davis, who was ailing at the time,
had been able to lobby against it.

Legislative Hall was an extension of home for Davis,
often full of family members. His daughter Mary lobbied
with him. His daughter Jessica was a receptionist for
the governor. His great nephew Alan G. Davis had
business there as the chief magistrate for the Justice
of the Peace Courts. Other Davises showed up, too.

People who were not literally family nevertheless
were treated that way. Davis gave a little dog to state
Sen. Margaret Rose Henry, a Wilmington Democrat. He
cooked scrapple at a pancake breakfast sponsored by
state Rep. Stephanie A. Ulbrich, a Newark Republican.

He teamed up with Glenn C. Kenton, a Republican
secretary of state for the du Pont administration from
1977 to 1985, to raise the money for official portraits
of first ladies Elise R.W. du Pont and Jeanne Tribbitt,
the wife of Democratic Gov. Sherman W. Tribbitt.

Davis started a tradition in 1984, while du Pont was
in office, of hosting a lobster dinner at Woodburn, the
governor's house, for the governor, some favored
lawmakers, Cabinet secretaries and staff members as the
legislative session wound down in June. It was stag, so
after Minner was elected, Mary Davis took over to host
an all-women gathering, and Ned Davis relegated himself
to taking some male legislators out to dinner.

It was all part of what made Ned Davis so essential.
"He understood perhaps better than anybody the
relationship between personal relationships and the
exercise of power," said William E. Manning, a
Republican lawyer who was a chief of staff for du Pont.

"We've grown much more coarse in our interactions. If
everyone could sit back and say, how would Ned handle
this, we'd all be better off."

It is fitting that a memorial for Davis has been
scheduled for Sunday at 4 p.m. at Dover Downs, a Rollins
property naturally in Dover, the capital city where he
left his indelible mark. It also is fitting that it
comes deep in the election season, when partisanship is
at its highest, and hundreds and hundreds of Democrats
and Republicans will cease their hostilities to share a
tribute to Ned.